Re: I just got a text from AT&T what is this?

I just got one of these also and I'm only at 2 gigs this month on my UN-LIMITED data plan. How can I be one of the top 5% of data users when at&t's standard limited data plans start at 2 gigs? Very upsetting, Maybe time to look for a new carrier.

AT&T's lowest tiered data plan is 200MB, not 2GB.

Add to the fact on the "time to look for a new carrier" - ther is only one of the top 3 carriers that carry the iphone that still ave a unlimited data plan (with a fair use policy in affect by the way) and that is Sprint - which from 5th estate reports has a worse data speed all the time then ATT's throttled speed. Verizon dropped unlimited data when they got the iphone

Re: I just got a text from AT&T what is this?

archermoo wrote:

Of course it is reasonable that people who have one of the tiered accounts don't get throttled. When they use large quantities of data, they pay more. Those of us with grandfathered unlimited accounts don't. Throttling someone who has historically used 6GB of data per month on an unlimited account once they hit 1.5 GB of data in a week doesn't sound particularly unreasonable to me.

I'm curious how you think carriers pay for increasing their capacity. I'll give you a hint: It has something to do with increasing revenue when demand increases.

AT&T is adding new customers to their network and therefore should be able to increase the capacity. So the increased customer base should be able to pay for the upgrade to their network. As time goes by, the unlimited data users will become even a smaller minority.

Right now, it is not in AT&T's interest to upgrade the 3G network when LTE is right around the corner. Hence, they want to penalize people who contractually were grandfathered in.

Do you have a unlimited data plan? Did you have foresight to join AT&T early enough? Are you an employee of AT&T? Or are you a customer on a tiered plan who is irritated that the network service isn't good enough?

Don't blame us users for not having enough bandwidth. Blame the service provider.

BTW, do you really think 6GB of data is a lot? Do you know how much data you use on you home internet service?

Re: I just got a text from AT&T what is this?

Of course it is reasonable that people who have one of the tiered accounts don't get throttled. When they use large quantities of data, they pay more. Those of us with grandfathered unlimited accounts don't. Throttling someone who has historically used 6GB of data per month on an unlimited account once they hit 1.5 GB of data in a week doesn't sound particularly unreasonable to me.

I'm curious how you think carriers pay for increasing their capacity. I'll give you a hint: It has something to do with increasing revenue when demand increases.

AT&T is adding new customers to their network and therefore should be able to increase the capacity. So the increased customer base should be able to pay for the upgrade to their network. As time goes by, the unlimited data users will become even a smaller minority.

Right now, it is not in AT&T's interest to upgrade the 3G network when LTE is right around the corner. Hence, they want to penalize people who contractually were grandfathered in.

Do you have a unlimited data plan? Did you have foresight to join AT&T early enough? Are you an employee of AT&T? Or are you a customer on a tiered plan who is irritated that the network service isn't good enough?

Don't blame us users for not having enough bandwidth. Blame the service provider.

BTW, do you really think 6GB of data is a lot? Do you know how much data you use on you home internet service?

New customers are paying for the increase in infrastructure needed to support them. Customers on tiered plans who use large amounts of data pay for that data, and so are paying for the infrastructure needed to support them. Those of use on unlimited plans however aren't paying any extra if we use large amounts of data. So I'm not surprised that AT&T would want to do something to keep data usage under control.

Yes, I have an unlimited plan, which I mentioned in the post that you quoted above. No, I don't work for AT&T. Though I have been a customer of theirs for quite some time.

And while we were grandfathered in, it wasn't because AT&T was contractually obligated to do so. It is because they decided as a customer relations move to allow people who had unlimited plans continue to use them even when upgrading their phones.

And yes, for cellular data 6gb is a lot in a month. For home internet service it wouldn't be, but the two aren't the same. Doing 80MPH on a flat stretch of road isn't much to brag about on a motorcycle. However it would be pretty impressive on a bicycle.

They have used 1.5GB in ONE week which is on track for their usage of 6GB last month. That is why they are being throttled.

@Wild Banchi wrote:I agree that being throttled at 1.5GB is rather ludicrous when even customers using tiered 2GB plans are free to use up to 2GB, probably without being throttled.

Alright. 1.5GB in a week is understandable for throttling, then. Really, the throttling should not start until the user reaches over 2GB, but it certainly will not take them long...

The problem I have with all of this is that theoretically, you could be throttled for using even as little as 100 MB in a week, if AT&T determines that to be the threshhold for the top 5%...and the insinuation from some folks that the throttling should apply no matter what the actual data usage amount turns out to be for the top 5%. These folks would even think it fair and reasonable that someone in the top 5% should be rightfully throttled even if the top 5% calculates out to be say, 1 GB...

Which assumes that AT&T would continue with the policy if the top 5% of users were only using 100MB of data. Somehow I doubt that would be the case. That is the problem with taking real world cases and presuming absurd extremes.

If you think that there are people in this forum that would consider throttling someone who was using 1GB of data in a month reasonable, please name them and provide links to posts that back up your assumption. Because I don't recall anyone ever saying that, but I'll certainly admit I might have missed it.

On the other hand, since you didn't put a time frame on your 1GB data consumption, I'd certainly agree that it could be reasonable to throttle someone who used 1GB of data in, say, 1 day. Particularly if that level of usage was a common occurance for them.

Ok, maybe I should have stated, "IMHO these folks may think it reasonable..." rather than, "These folks would think it reasonable"--but in any case my intent wasn't to imply that someone here had explicitly stated that it would be reasonable.

The reason why I didn't put a timeframe on my 1 GB example is because apparently nobody but AT&T knows what timeframe they use when they determine how much data the top 5% uses; some folks may feel that 200 MB/day, 1 GB/week and 4 GB/month all would be fair watermarks for calculating the top 5%...but would it be fair for AT&T to use all three simultaneously when weeding out the offenders? It's quite possible for someone to use 4 GB in a month yet not use or thus average 200 MB/day, and for someone else to use 200/MB in a day--for say, a whole week--yet wind up not using 4 GB for the month...yet either user could be throttled if AT&T chooses to calculate the top 5% based on multiple floating scales. And no, my example is definitely not an extreme and/or absurd case--after all, we have at least one person admitting that he used 1.5 GB in a week...and it is not absolutely difficult for the average user to use 200 MB in a day if he happened to be bored that day and thus decided to stream a bunch of Netflix movies to kill some time.

Re: I just got a text from AT&T what is this?

AT&T has 90-something million customers. If 40% of them have smartphones, that's mid-30 million numbers. 5% of that figure is potentially 1.5 million people.

@Wild Banchi wrote:When I had initially heard the message a few months ago that AT&T was going to begin throttling the top 5% of its data users, I had thought it would only be a small handful of people. Wow, was I underestimated...

Re: I just got a text from AT&T what is this?

AT&T has 90-something million customers. If 40% of them have smartphones, that's mid-30 million numbers. 5% of that figure is potentially 1.5 million people.

@Wild Banchi wrote:When I had initially heard the message a few months ago that AT&T was going to begin throttling the top 5% of its data users, I had thought it would only be a small handful of people. Wow, was I underestimated...

Yup. When I first heard the news, I forgot to factor in those million or so people. I did not think there would be quite that many. There sure seem to be about a million people complaining about it here, though...

Re: I just got a text from AT&T what is this?

AT&T has 90-something million customers. If 40% of them have smartphones, that's mid-30 million numbers. 5% of that figure is potentially 1.5 million people.

@Wild Banchi wrote:When I had initially heard the message a few months ago that AT&T was going to begin throttling the top 5% of its data users, I had thought it would only be a small handful of people. Wow, was I underestimated...

Yup. When I first heard the news, I forgot to factor in those million or so people. I did not think there would be quite that many. There sure seem to be about a million people complaining about it here, though...

See, that's the thing. I've only seen two people that have been throttled complaining here. Though I'll admit I might have missed some others.

Re: I just got a text from AT&T what is this?

@archermoo

If you take a look at some of the threads in the General Care and Support section of this Forum, you will see many more people complaining about being throttled. That's where I got my "millions" claim from.

Re: I just got a text from AT&T what is this?

This is not a surprise and it is not new. AT&T, and other companies, have been saying for months and months that they want to/and are going to ... discourage.... unlimited users. They figured out 10 seconds after making them avilable that they lose too much money with unlimted plans. They've been very vocal about it and are not obligated to honor those plans forever. They can make the rules up as they go along and as long as they give 30 days notice, no one can do a darn thing about it.

Verizon saw the light and stopped offering unlimited... T-mobile throttles.. and it is only going to be a matter of time before Sprint wakes up and goes to tiered plans too.

The days of "free" or low cost unlimited are all but gone. Cell companies, Home Internet companies...they all see they can make more money putting on limits. So you have 2 choices... deal with it... or figure out how to open your own company, lol

Re: I just got a text from AT&T what is this?

This is not a surprise and it is not new. AT&T, and other companies, have been saying for months and months that they want to/and are going to ... discourage.... unlimited users. They figured out 10 seconds after making them avilable that they lose too much money with unlimted plans. They've been very vocal about it and are not obligated to honor those plans forever. They can make the rules up as they go along and as long as they give 30 days notice, no one can do a darn thing about it.

Verizon saw the light and stopped offering unlimited... T-mobile throttles.. and it is only going to be a matter of time before Sprint wakes up and goes to tiered plans too.

The days of "free" or low cost unlimited are all but gone. Cell companies, Home Internet companies...they all see they can make more money putting on limits. So you have 2 choices... deal with it... or figure out how to open your own company, lol

LOL who's to say that they won't try to find a way to make even more money off of tiered users as well? Heck--IMHO AT&T should have set the 2 GB tiered plan price to $30 instead of $25; after all, $30 didn't stop millions of folks from purchasing the first three generations of iPhones...

Re: I just got a text from AT&T what is this?

This is not a surprise and it is not new. AT&T, and other companies, have been saying for months and months that they want to/and are going to ... discourage.... unlimited users. They figured out 10 seconds after making them avilable that they lose too much money with unlimted plans. They've been very vocal about it and are not obligated to honor those plans forever. They can make the rules up as they go along and as long as they give 30 days notice, no one can do a darn thing about it.

Verizon saw the light and stopped offering unlimited... T-mobile throttles.. and it is only going to be a matter of time before Sprint wakes up and goes to tiered plans too.

The days of "free" or low cost unlimited are all but gone. Cell companies, Home Internet companies...they all see they can make more money putting on limits. So you have 2 choices... deal with it... or figure out how to open your own company, lol

LOL who's to say that they won't try to find a way to make even more money off of tiered users as well? Heck--IMHO AT&T should have set the 2 GB tiered plan price to $30 instead of $25; after all, $30 didn't stop millions of folks from purchasing the first three generations of iPhones...

I'm guessing they were more concerned with giving people incentive to switch from the unlimited plans. With the 2GB costing the same as the unlimited plan I'm guessing a lot fewer people would've switched.

Re: I just got a text from AT&T what is this?

This is not a surprise and it is not new. AT&T, and other companies, have been saying for months and months that they want to/and are going to ... discourage.... unlimited users. They figured out 10 seconds after making them avilable that they lose too much money with unlimted plans. They've been very vocal about it and are not obligated to honor those plans forever. They can make the rules up as they go along and as long as they give 30 days notice, no one can do a darn thing about it.

Verizon saw the light and stopped offering unlimited... T-mobile throttles.. and it is only going to be a matter of time before Sprint wakes up and goes to tiered plans too.

The days of "free" or low cost unlimited are all but gone. Cell companies, Home Internet companies...they all see they can make more money putting on limits. So you have 2 choices... deal with it... or figure out how to open your own company, lol

LOL who's to say that they won't try to find a way to make even more money off of tiered users as well? Heck--IMHO AT&T should have set the 2 GB tiered plan price to $30 instead of $25; after all, $30 didn't stop millions of folks from purchasing the first three generations of iPhones...

I'm guessing they were more concerned with giving people incentive to switch from the unlimited plans. With the 2GB costing the same as the unlimited plan I'm guessing a lot fewer people would've switched.

True...in that case--if AT&T really only cared about the bottom line when it comes to data plans, then what they should have done was get everybody off of the unlimited plan and price 200 MB at $20 and 2 GB at $30; I wouldn't think anyone against unlimited data (for whatever reason) would or should complain about those pricing levels, seeing that under the old system all those millions and millions of 1st-3rd gen iPhone users were apparently more than happy to pay $30 (I don't remember if it was $30 as well for 1st-gen iPhone users) no matter how much or how little data they used.

Re: I just got a text from AT&T what is this?

I'm guessing they were more concerned with giving people incentive to switch from the unlimited plans. With the 2GB costing the same as the unlimited plan I'm guessing a lot fewer people would've switched.

True...in that case--if AT&T really only cared about the bottom line when it comes to data plans, then what they should have done was get everybody off of the unlimited plan and price 200 MB at $20 and 2 GB at $30; I wouldn't think anyone against unlimited data (for whatever reason) would or should complain about those pricing levels, seeing that under the old system all those millions and millions of 1st-3rd gen iPhone users were apparently more than happy to pay $30 (I don't remember if it was $30 as well for 1st-gen iPhone users) no matter how much or how little data they used.

A couple of problems with that. One of the reasons that AT&T gave for moving to the tiered plans was to provide a cheaper alternative to the existing unlimited plans that all iPhone users had to have. Making the 2GB plan cost the same as the existing unlimited plan would give people very little reason to move to it. And, presumably for PR reasons, they didn't wan't to just unilaterally get rid of the unlimited plans to force people into the new structure.

And for 1st gen phones it was $20/month for unlimited data, which also included 200 texts if I recall correctly.

Re: I just got a text from AT&T what is this?

I'm guessing they were more concerned with giving people incentive to switch from the unlimited plans. With the 2GB costing the same as the unlimited plan I'm guessing a lot fewer people would've switched.

True...in that case--if AT&T really only cared about the bottom line when it comes to data plans, then what they should have done was get everybody off of the unlimited plan and price 200 MB at $20 and 2 GB at $30; I wouldn't think anyone against unlimited data (for whatever reason) would or should complain about those pricing levels, seeing that under the old system all those millions and millions of 1st-3rd gen iPhone users were apparently more than happy to pay $30 (I don't remember if it was $30 as well for 1st-gen iPhone users) no matter how much or how little data they used.

A couple of problems with that. One of the reasons that AT&T gave for moving to the tiered plans was to provide a cheaper alternative to the existing unlimited plans that all iPhone users had to have. Making the 2GB plan cost the same as the existing unlimited plan would give people very little reason to move to it. And, presumably for PR reasons, they didn't wan't to just unilaterally get rid of the unlimited plans to force people into the new structure.

And for 1st gen phones it was $20/month for unlimited data, which also included 200 texts if I recall correctly.

Hence why I said they should just eliminate the unlimited plan entirely and sunset those users already on it; besides, even with unlimited plan folks being grandfathered I'd still argue for a $30/2 GB charge because then you can choose between paying $30 for unlimited but potentially throttled data, or $30 (and upwards) for a fixed amount of--but completely unthrottled--data...pick your poison. "Cheaper alternative"? Puhleeze...this is the same company that eliminated the $10/1000 text plan so that the only plan users who are looking for a text plan can choose from is one that costs more than the outgoing one--the $20/unlimited; how is that exactly a "cheaper alternative"? And please don't counter that you're at least getting unlimited texts--if it costs more than the one that is being eliminated...then how exactly would that be "cheaper" and an "alternative" to the other plan if it's the only one now available?